Wireless communication networks were traditionally used to allow communication with mobile telephones. However, they are increasingly being used for the transmission of other information. One type of device that uses such wireless networks is a machine type communication MTC device that is used for the communication of information from machines, for example from smart utility meters. Such devices may have very different requirements to mobile telephones. One feature of such devices is that they are often not mobile and may be located in areas of high signal attenuation such as a basement making communication between a network node and the device difficult. An enhanced coverage communication mode has been devised to address this, wherein during an enhanced coverage mode of operation certain messages are sent repeatedly allowing the information to be accumulated and be decoded.
A base station or network node will broadcast to user equipment within range details of the network and of how to connect to it. A user equipment will signal to the base station that it wishes to connect to the network using one of a predetermined number of preambles. These preambles are a specific pattern or signature which is used by the network node to differentiate requests coming from different user equipment. There can be contention if two user equipment select to use a same preamble during a same time period. Some of the available preambles may be reserved for use exclusively by a certain type of user equipment. This is one way of indicating the type of user equipment to the network node where it is important that the network node is aware of the type of user equipment as it may impact the type of signalling the user equipment can decode. However, given that the number of available preambles is limited, reserving preambles for certain types of user equipment may waste preamble resources and increase the likelihood of collision, particularly where there are currently not many of that particular type of user equipment using a network.
It would be desirable to be able to identify a type of user equipment while not placing too large a burden on the available preamble resources.